« No Signal: A Supercut | Main | Lu of averages »

September 25, 2009

Comments

Noel

Anna Faris is one of those people that just looking at her makes me start to laugh. I need to rent this immediately.

Kerlyssa

'It can't be rape, all guys do it!'

/sigh

lily

the bigger rape is that of my eyeballs by seth rogan. there is no female equivalent of seth rogan in front of a camera- and for good reason. His performance felt like a danny mcbride imitation to me.

Amanda

So...Jody Hill using rape is acceptable, but Diablo Cody using black language isn't? You seem to be weirdly selective about what is or is not offensive.

I personally liked the movie, but didn't laugh much.

A good review here...

http://cinephiliatheblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/observe-and-report-2009-dir-jody-hill.html

Crescent

I got to see an advanced screening of this in Chicago and some dude from AICN introduced it and said "Raise your hand if you think you are about to see a comedy" and of course everyone did. He was a little dramatic and went on to drop a millioin and one film fest names that he'd "attended" but I'll admit I was one of the people that thought it was going to be a Apatow-esque romp. (I hate that word but it's apt)

I couldn't stop talking or thinking about it for days. I loved it. I think.

Jason C. Romero

For the record, if someone is inebriated then they can't consent, and without consent it's rape. But I don't know what happens when both people are drunk.

Jason

Of course in a perfect world nobody would ever do an irresponsible thing like take drugs, drink and then have sloppy unremembered sex, and it's delightful to pretend we live in that world and to then go and judge those horrible people who do such things and call the horrible man the rapist and the loose girl the slut and to have a word for every action we take that just sums it all up in a neat little box. That would be a wonderful world to live in, huh?

Also, a sometimes positive thing is to realize we live in an imperfect world, this shit happens, and not everybody a fucking monster coded in black-and-white terms and sometimes it's the job of artistic endeavors to put a mirror up to these imperfections. Sometimes that works too.

Or ya know, cast the first stone and shit. Whatever.

Kerlyssa

Or maybe you shouldn't rape someone when they pass out on your furniture.

Just sayin'.

Misery

This movie was horrible. My husband loves Anna Faris, so that's the only reason why we watched it. I can't stand Seth, they need to stop putting him in movies!

Jason

Yes, thanks for that bit of wisdom there, Kerlyssa. I will tuck it away in my don't-forget-to-rape-anybody-today hope chest and cherish it a long time.

All this is missing my entire point however, that it's lovely to sit back and say someone's doing a bad thing but to bother to look at why somebody's doing a bad thing or to dissect how that bad thing sits in relation to not only the actual world we live in but the fake world of the movie that's been constructed by Mr. Hill and how that messes with our actual world, well that's apparently too much to bear. So we should all just see who can scream rape the loudest and then that person gets a cookie for being so bright.

thistlebones

Fucking a girl who is drunk is one thing.

Fucking a girl who is so shitfaced she's vomiting and unconscious is another thing entirely. Whether or not you consider it rape, it's hard to sympathize with a character who would be able to get hard at the prospect of fucking someone in that condition.

Sam

If either party or both is under the influence of alcohol, there is no consent.

Jason

Exactly. It is HARD to sympathize with that person. I also find it hard to sympathize with murderers and Republicans, but that doesn't mean I don't a film can't show me what those deranged people are up to too. Honestly I don't give a shit if anybody sympathizes with Ronnie, and I'm certainly not saying what he did in this scene wasn't wrong, and I don't think that Jonah Hill's intent either. This movie and this scene seems to me that it gets under so many people's skin because people just can't seem to fit it into the conventional boxes that they want it to get into: it stars comedians, it's got the punch-lines, but he undermines every scenario with what these horrible people would really be like to be around instead of the glossy, oh-let's-laugh-at-the-morons schtick that so much of supposed comedy is about today.

Molly

I love your site, and you are usually pretty on point with your reviews, but reading "if having sex with an obliterated girl constitutes rape, virtually every straight guy in America is a rapist" is pretty fucking disappointing.

When a girl is so drunk that she has puked on the pillow next to you and can barely speak, she cannot give consent.

Robyn

Hey, Rich. I have to admit that I was pretty disappointed in reading this review. You might find Sady's (Tiger Beatdown) opposing opinion pretty interesting. At least take a glance?

http://tigerbeatdown.blogspot.com/2009/04/um.html

thistlebones

Jason: to clarify I can't comment on the film as I haven't seen it.

Difficult, uncomfortable films are usually much more interesting than easy laughs. However, Rich's post seems to imply that it isn't rape or isn't a problem because plenty of straight men do the same thing in real life. Rich's writing style leads me to believe he's not being entirely serious with that comment, but I find that perspective pretty gross.

Leroy

Did I land on the wrong blog? Why the tempest in a tampon over one scene? Whether or not the scene depicts a rape by legal, moral or Taliban standards has nothing to do with the quality of the movie. Surely people are not suggesting here that a film should be condemned because it contains a rape scene or because the protagonist is unsympathetic?

That kind of moral high dudgeon over a film is just embarrassing.

And as to Rich's comment about straight men - that's what you call "hyperbole." Rhetorical device.
So pull your panties out your asscrack and give homey a break.

melloe

aw man, I really liked your Coraline header.

also, Seth Rogan is nasty-looking but I guess that makes him perfect for this part. even my love for Anna Faris could not get me to see this movie though..

cizmad

Based upon the logic of "consent cannot be given while one or both parties are intoxicated, and sex without consent is rape", like... who here is not a rapist or rape victim? Honestly.

The problem with the super-politically-correct brand of sexual understanding, wherein everyone must consent to everything and there is a piece of flavored latex to go over every STinfectable mucus membrane is that it bears no actual resemblance to the way things happen in life. There's always ambiguity in sex, there are always certain boundaries that get played with and compromises and adjustments to be made. Our sex bits, to put it bluntly, are not wired rationally.

People get drunk and fuck. That's not rape. People have sex and then regret it later. That's not rape. People lose their virginity when they're not sure about it at the time and then later the guy is a big jerk to them and they feel like they were used. Shitty? Yes. Still not rape. Sorry, but that word is a big, powerful one and the way it gets tossed around to describe every sexual situation where there's ambiguity or regret is ridiculous and detracts from the gravity of rape when it really happens.

So... to relate this back to discussion of the actual movie... I'm now really excited to see this, because I'm always into a movie that doesn't wrap the conclusions up in the shot, and as much as that may be a single scene, it's a scene that most movies would never have left open-ended.

rustyspigot

It just bothered me that there was no resolution to any of his actions. Oh, I killed six drug dealers, oh, I assaulted numerous skateboarding children. Oh, I fought the entire police force. Oh, I shot someone. And then he just goes home.

I did appreciate the liberal use of "Fuck!", though.

EZ Mac

The problem, cizmad, is that people like you dismiss rape "when it really happens." Because it REALLY HAPPENS just like that. Rape isn't always a stranger-in-a-dark-alley situation. It is USUALLY a situation such as this. The woman USUALLY knows the man. People need to be informed about what rape actually is. Especially men.

Intoxicated women cannot consent. Without consent, sex becomes rape. It is disgusting, dismissive, victim-blaming attitudes like yours that makes it difficult for women to report rapes such as these.

Minkxx

People get on my nerves with this everything short of a notarized contract is rape nonsense. Sexual acts can be off-putting (having sex with a girl who (maybe in the scene you didn't see) says yes, pukes, falls asleep, wakes up and says keep going) without being rape. You can let someone pork you and regret it the next day, that doesn't then turn the act into rape. If some guys is persistent and you "didn't know how to say no," that's not rape. That's a lesson. Grow a pair and learn to stand up for yourself.

I'm a woman (all day and all night) and I don't say this just to be a jerk. All this responsibility we try to put on guys for making absolutely sure we absolutely mean yes and didn't happen to change our minds is unfair, unreasonable, and it puts too much responsibility for our bodies in the hands of some guy.

Real feminism, real protection of women demands that we learn to be empowered and protect ourselves. Rape is too serious and too heartbreaking to be called out every time some girl doesn't feel so good about what happened last night.

s2couto

You know what bothers me most about when people, especially women, talk about rape? No one ever admits to being raped. Stats are 70% of women will experience some form of sexual assault. Here, I'll say it: I was sexually assaulted. It was a friend. I was intoxicated as was he, and I was asleep when he decided then was a good time to get off. Such seems to be the case in this movie.

Here's the other problem: victim-blaming and bleeding heart liberalism. Are you trying to tell me in Western society that men don't know right from wrong re: rape? That we should be more concerned about one's reasons for raping and tell victims to "grow a pair"? This is the court process in a nutshell. The victim is swept under the rug and accused persons get every program available to them to "reprogram" this behaviour. And they always re-offend. And they always take someone down with them. And everyone involved learns a behaviour, whether it be rape is a mitigatable offence or that women need to take it and shut up about it. And so the cycle continues. Both parties are important here and if more people would ADMIT it happened to them and discuss it, not treat it as a dirty, unspoken, didn't-fucking-happen event we would get somewhere. But the code of silence is preserved by people who blame victims and mollycoddle offenders. Do people not know this shit?

Rich, I don't know how flippant (or not) you were being, but I am also disappointed. I wonder if you consider women.

hi

I love your blog Rich, but you're often a little off when it comes to feminism. You're essentially telling women to learn to take a joke. In this "I Kissed a Girl"/post-Girls Gone Wild culture, girls find themselves doing things they don't want to do just to keep men around (because it's expected of them), and men are not expected to reciprocate in that manner. There's a conversation that needs to be had about nihilism and the abused's quest for love, but deeming something okay because it's common is completely shutting that dialogue down.

In response to the commenter Lee, anyone who refers to a feminist backlash as a "tempest in a tampon" is not going to like or understand the answers to any questions he might ask.

N

my god, people, Rich didn't personally rape you or your little dog either. neither did Seth Rogen. get the fuck over it.

The comments to this entry are closed.